Chapter 5
European Quest for New Land
-The Spanish in America
Cortez, Coronado, Friar Padilla, de Soto, Onete.
-The French in America
La Salle, La Harpe
Cortez
• In Latin America, Cortes had defeated the
Aztec nation by capturing one man,
Montezuma, their god-king.
• The Spaniards assumed that all Indians
were ruled by the same type of
government as the Aztecs.
– The “god-king” concept of the Aztecs was that
one ruler ruled many clans and segments of
the mighty nation.
– Therefore they failed to control the Indians to
the north, even after defeating them in battle.
Fernando Cortez
Montezuma
Aztec Temple
Coronado
• In 1540, Don Antonio de Mendoza, “the good
viceroy,” had been appointed by Spanish
Emperor Charles V (5th) to rule New Spain.
• Mendoza sent the Spanish cavalry under the
command of Coronado into the unknown north
country to search for gold.
• Because Spain was the most powerful nation in
Europe, even in the world. The conquistadors
believed they were invincible… which they were.
• And they considered all strangers their enemies.
Cortez
• In the north not only did separate tribes
have their own chiefs, but most tribes had
several chiefs.
• The religions and governments of northern
Indians were diverse, and each tribe was a
separate nation.
• The Spaniards did not come prepared to
deal with that situation.
– They did not bring nearly enough men to
control hundreds of “kingdoms”
Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado
Don Antonio de Mendoza
Coronado
• Mendoza was confident that Coronado
and his army would find and conquer the
fabled Seven Cities of Cibola.
• It was said that common utensils there
were made from gold and that jewelstudded houses were built many stories
high.
• The Conquistadors were looking for the
“3-G’s”… Gold, Glory for Spain, and God.
Coronado
• Had the Spaniards been less powerful and more
friendly, history might have set quite a different
course, for after crossing Oklahoma and turning
west, the army did find the famous cities.
– From a distance the houses, well-fashioned pueblos
built several stories high, sparkled as though
weighted down with precious jewels.
• Greedy for gold, the Spanish army attacked and
defeated the settlement, only to find that their
“jewels” were nothing more than gypsum
glistening in the sun.
• The conquering Spaniards found a little silver,
some fine clay pottery, and a few trinkets.
• They found no gold.
Coronado
• Coronado and his men defeated all the cities.
Coronado hoisted the flag of Spain and claimed
new territory for the emperor.
– He recorded what he had seen in places no other
white man had traveled.
– He found food and salt in Indian storehouses.
– He sent out scouting parties that explored the Little
Colorado River and found the Grand Canyon.
– He executed many of the people he had conquered.
– For a year, Coronado and his men moved back and
forth across the plains and mesas, fighting and
searching.
– They never found gold. In the spring of 1542, they
returned to Mexico.
How did Coronado Defeat the Indians???
• The Spaniards defeated the inhabitants of
Cibola with relative ease.
• They had three distinct advantages — the horse,
the gun, and the wagon.
– They were able to ride in and attack and to flee swiftly
because of their horses.
– The Spanish guns made death much more certain at
greater distances than the Indians’ arrows and
stones.
– With their “rolling boxes”, the Spaniards were able to
carry necessary ammunition, food and other items for
life and defense wherever they went.
– These items bore the element of surprise against an
otherwise able enemy and left the Indians at the
mercy of the Spanish Conquistadors.
Friar Juan de Padilla
• Coronado had traveled across part of Oklahoma
and western Kansas and had found a Wichitatype village inhabited by a tribe of tattooed
farmers.
• Friar Juan de Padilla, a chaplain with the
expedition, decided to return there when
Coronado’s army returned to Mexico.
– Padilla wished to establish a mission for the tribe. He
was accompanied by Andres de Campo, a
Portuguese soldier.
• They ministered to the tattooed people during
most of 1542 and then traveled back through
central Oklahoma to visit another tribe.
– En route, they were attacked by a hostile tribe, and
Padilla died
Friar Juan de Padilla
• After being held captive for over a year, Andres
do Campo and 2 other soldiers escaped.
• As they made their way back to the Gulf of
Mexico, they carried a heavy wooden cross as
a tribute to Friar Padilla.
– This took these men 5 years!
• The route they took through central Oklahoma
and Texas was then used by Spanish officials
as the main way to get to their northern lands,
they called it the “trail of the cross” and it
matches up with present day Interstate 35.
SPANISH LEGACY
• When they departed, the Spaniards left a legacy
of distrust, hatred, and violence.
– Most important, however, they left horses.
• Nothing changed the life of the western tribes as
did the horses.
– Hunting was easier from horseback.
– The use of horses made them more powerful in
warfare, just as they had made the Spaniards too
powerful to defeat.
– Horses soon became the mark of wealth among
those tribes.
• Two hundred years later, when white men again
encountered the western Indians, their horses
made them more formidable foes than Coronado
had faced.
HERNANDO DE SOTO
• Other animals brought for the first time into
North America by the Spaniards were
pigs, goats, sheep, cattle, and chickens.
• Hernando De Soto brought many of them
because he didn’t know if sufficient food
would be available to feed his army.
• De Soto had been sent to the New World
to conquer Florida, and the Spanish
emperor had made him governor of Cuba
and Florida.
Hernando
de Soto
HERNANDO DE SOTO
• De Soto’s army expected to find wealth in
Florida similar to the jewels and precious metals
found in South America by Cortes.
• When they failed to find what they were seeking,
they pushed on into the interior of the country.
– They fought the Choctaws in the Mississippi Valley
and continued westward.
• They crossed the Mississippi River in May,
1541, and pressed onward.
• De Soto’s private secretary, Rodrigo Ranjel, kept
the official record of their journey.
HERNANDO DE SOTO
• When the army reached the Grand and Arkansas River
valleys in eastern Oklahoma, he recorded details of what
they saw.
• He wrote about “wild cows” that the Indians killed and
about how the “cow skins” were used in many different
ways.
• He described the complicated stockades which protected
many Indian towns and villages.
• He told of elaborate temples in which complex rituals
were performed.
• He told of friendly native people wearing beautiful
clothes and adornments of shell and pearl.
• These inhabitants guided them through the wilderness
from place to place, until the Spaniards made it plain
they considered the natives as nothing more than beasts
to be chased by their dogs.
HERNANDO DE SOTO
• Finally, tired of being mistreated and robbed, the Indians
became hostile toward De Soto and his men.
• The Spaniards, at last convinced that they would find no
gold, turned back to the Mississippi River, where De
Soto died of an illness (fever) on May 15, 1542.
– Half of his original force survived to return to Panuco, Mexico, by
following the river south.
• Controversy has arisen as to whether De Soto actually
came within the borders of present-day Oklahoma.
• Ranjel’s (his recordkeeper) writings seem to indicate,
however, that the expedition reached the Arkansas River
and perhaps came even further into the eastern part of
the state.
Don Juan de Onate
• The last major Spanish expedition into
Oklahoma was led by Don Juan de Onate in
1601.
– Again it was a search for gold.
• Taking artillery carts and more than 700 horses
and mules, Onate and his men followed the San
Buenaventura (Canadian) River to the Antelope
Hills in the western part of the state.
• They marched northward into Kansas and on to
the country of the tattooed people.
• The Quivira, or tattooed people, probably lived
near the location of what is Wichita, Kansas,
today
Don Juan de Onate
• Upon their arrival, Onate’s army was attacked
vigorously by the Quivira, who had greeted
Coronado quite placidly 60 years earlier.
– The fight was so violent that most of the Spaniards
were injured and forced to return to their encampment
on the Rio Grande.
• Although he was not interested in it as a prize,
Onate recorded the beauty of the Great Plains,
the huge herds of buffalo which grazed upon it,
and the remarkable fruits and grasses he saw
growing there.
The Frenchies…
La Salle and La Harpe
• Just as the Spanish came to seek their fortunes
in the new land, so did the French — but the
French did not want to conquer.
– The French wanted to trade, and to trade for furs in
particular.
• Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, never saw
Oklahoma, but in 1682 he claimed the area for
France.
• He claimed not only the Mississippi River Valley,
but the rivers which flowed to the Mississippi as
well.
• He named the area Louisiana in honor of the
French ruler, King Louis XIV (14th)
La Salle
“This French Explorer, seeking trade with
the Wichita Indians, came North from
Louisiana on August 25, 1719. He
camped 3 miles East of Hartshorne.”
La Salle
• The French sought peace and trade with the Indians, but
their feelings toward the Spanish were not so friendly.
• Louis XIV wrote in his memoirs that La Salle hoped to
gain control of trade in Louisiana by securing two
advantageous ports.
• He particularly wanted one approximately sixty miles
upriver from the Gulf on the banks of the Colbert
(Mississippi) River.
– In addition, by enlisting large native forces, supplemented by 400
or so French soldiers, the explorer planned to expel the
Spaniards from the area.
• La Salle was certain that the Indians’ hatred of the
Spaniards would seal any necessary pact between the
natives and the French.
La Salle
• Actually, La Salle’s plan might have worked had
the French army not encountered so many
misfortunes.
– Lost in the wilderness, seeing their companions die
from disease, and further weakened by desertions
and Indian attacks, the French soldiers turned against
their leader and killed him in his sleep.
– The survivors returned to France and left dreams of
New World control buried with La Salle.
• Less political fur traders carried on the trade with
the Indians, however, and in 1718, Bernard de la
Harpe began trading along the Red and
Arkansas Rivers.
– He established no permanent trading post, but his
records added to the knowledge of historians
concerned with that time period.
CULTURAL EXCHANGES
• European-Indian contact began to cause change
right away on both sides. Each contributed items
to the other’s culture.
• In addition to corn, beans, and squash, Indians
introduced Europeans to pumpkins, avocados,
pineapples, chewing gum, and chocolate.
• The Europeans brought peas, pears, apricots
and several other fruits the Indians had not tried.
They also brought wheat, pigs, and horses.
CULTURAL EXCHANGES
• From the Europeans, the Indians learned
metalcraft.
• The Europeans taught them the art of
metallurgy, heating metal and hammering it into
a particular shape.
• The Indians began to make a few farm
implements and small household items.
• Some tribes made beautiful silver jewelry, for
which they are well-known today.
• Prior to the coming of the Europeans, the
Indians’ primary materials with which to make
their tools and utensils were clay, wood, stone,
and bone.
“Don't touch that please, your primitive intellect wouldn't understand alloys and
compositions and things with... molecular structures.” -Ash Williams
CULTURAL EXCHANGES
• For many years, Indians continued to
trade with Europeans for most of the metal
items needed, as they perfected their own
crafts.
– Like the whites, Indians wanted to own
knives.
• However, the most powerful metal item
introduced to the Indians by Europeans
was the gun. Gun trading was a lively,
prosperous, and oftentimes law-breaking
business for frontier traders.
CULTURAL EXCHANGES
• Most Indian tribes had some form of system by which the
elderly and the disabled were supported.
– No such system existed anywhere in Europe in the form of a
government agency.
• Sanitation and city planning were developed sciences
among some Indian tribes.
– These abilities account for the absence of certain diseases
among the natives, or so some experts believe.
• Europe, on the other hand, frequently suffered epidemics
of various kinds which modern scientists attribute to the
lack of proper sanitation.
CULTURAL EXCHANGES
• Perhaps the greatest surprise concerning Indian culture at the time
of the Europeans’ first arrivals was the lack of a wheel.
– In spite of their advanced technology in some areas, the
American Indian had never developed the concept of the wheel.
• Therefore, some of their technical advancement may
have been hindered from the extensive growth that could
have occurred with the use of mobile conveyances and
other mechanisms made possible by the rolling disc.